For the past 1-3 months I've had no routine, and there is no routine in sight for the next month. I spent three weeks of December traveling for my previous project, but that should be over now. Then there were holidays, and on-call for me including working 11 hours on New Year's Day, throw in a couple of weeks on-site with another client, and now two weeks of vacation and a week of out-of-state training are coming up.

My savings goals were recently fulfilled, so with all the change happening I am at a point in my life where I have no short-term or medium term goals and no routine. Sometimes I feel a little lost or like I'm failing at something, but then I realize I'm pretty much where I want to be and just need to get used to being home again. For the past two years home has been where I wash clothes, replenish toiletries, visit family, repack for the next week and try to rest before leaving again. So I need to get used to keeping the place cleaned up and then getting out and enjoying myself more. It's funny how you can forget how to do that after a year or two.

I am changing job duties so I'll be local most of the time, albeit driving around a lot. Coincidentally I expect to reach a savings goal next paycheck. So no debt, and I have my retirement and after-tax savings in the shape I want them. Now I need a new savings goal, or maybe I should just spend it all on booze and women and then waste the rest.

I won't have much if any overtime, but I'll be at home and working days and capable of having a life again. Things are looking good.

2006 doesn't sound like very long ago, but heck it's been just about 3 years since I moved back, and I've been working and in my apartment for over 2 years now.

I'm not thrilled with my current assignment. I travel all the time and have almost no life. On the other hand I get lots of overtime and apparent job security. I just paid off the car I bought in late 2007 and am now debt-free again.

This past week I was working locally, and today I finally felt at-home enough to straighten the place up and rearrange a little bit. It's been quite a while since home was more than a room I stay at two nights a week.

Well, as it turns out there aren't a whole lot of options right now, and just because I work for an outsourcing company doesn't mean everything is fat and happy. Anyway, I'm traveling again, and it's steady and apparently reliable work for the rest of the year.

I finally got around to taking the Network+ exam today and passed with flying colors. I had been putting off studying for it for too long and finally decided I could probably pass it without studying, and I did. I had to pay for it myself, but hopefully it's worth it in the long run.

It looks like I'm going to be on the same extended-hours, lots-of-travel project this year as there aren't any other secure projects available now. So I guess I'd better enjoy being at home during January because it's going to be another long year. At least I'll be getting lots of overtime.

I'm about to take off for one of the last two weeks of this work project. The project doesn't start up again until February, but I'm doubting I'll go for it again if I have other choices. The travel sucks all my free time away. I may be doing field dispatch support, but I'm hoping to get on another project or perhaps go onsite with another client.

I suppose I could worry about job security about now, but I think the current economy benefits my security as my employer is the place companies will come to after laying off their own staff and realizing they actually do still need some support.

I had made a MySpace account a while back for some reason or other but never kept up with it. Recently though I joined Facebook, and various people from my past are finding me there.

I just gained the CompTIA PDI+ certification for printers and document imaging. Not my favorite topic, but it helps keep me employed.

I've been wanting to toy with IPv6 for a while, and I think the time is right. I want to be familiar with it as I expect companies to start going to it more and more as the government and foreign nations transition. It's still hard to get it natively from normal ISPs, but I just signed up at SixXS hoping to get onto the IPv6 network via their tunneling POPs.

So with any luck this site may be available in IPv6 sometime soon.

The new project is very busy. I'm overnight-upgrading usually 4 sites a week, traveling two days and trying to catch up on paperwork and sleep wherever I can. The good news is that I'm still employed, hourly and cashing in on overtime.

We are upgrading so much, and there are so many opportunities for something to go wrong, so it can be frustrating. But then it's quite a feeling of accomplishment when everything is done.

And of course the moment I start on a two-week, 140-hour marathon my web host decides to blow up, so my web sites were down for a few days, and several sites were down three weeks because I had to find time to update them before restoring them. But that is all back in order now.

I spent last week on various calls for printer and laptop repairs. It's been a few years since I've taken field service calls, and I am must now getting the car organized like I want it and figuring out my company's ticketing systems and procedures. Next week will be more field service, and then I start the new project April 20.

I'll be traveling quite a bit, but I'll be the lead tech responsible for server installs, switch installs and leading a team of 3-5 contract techs who will reimage or replace PCs, and I think we'll also be installing some multifunction printers. I'll be doing one site per night, so it's going to be a challenging schedule.

I'll learn more about the particulars on conference calls this week, and the first two weeks of the project will be lightly scheduled to allow for on-the-job training.

I passed my Server+ exam today, so I'm CompTIA Server+ certified now!

I had scheduled the test for Sunday, but this morning I was consistently acing the practice tests and getting tired of the same question set. And I had a certain confidence, so rather than random book studying for the next 24 hours I called the test center to see if I could take the test now. 30 minutes later I was sitting at the test station and starting my test.

Server+ demands a lot of specific knowledge, and I was running into two problems. In some cases they wanted pedantic specific knowledge (of ATA and SCSI specs in particular, they wanted cable lengths, connector types, data transfer speeds and termination/master-slave info), and in other cases I disagreed with their answers because I had experience that told me otherwise. For the specifics I was lacking in the practiced tests I went over the various tables of info.

During the practice tests I learned what type of indoctrination I should have to offer the correct answers. In particular there are many projects that run on Unix/Linux to integrate with Windows, but the Server+ exam is from the perspective of the core OS vendor products. Sure you can put a Samba WINS server or use several flavors of RDP clients on Unix/Linux and X, but the answer to the Server+ exam is NOT to use RDP to configure a Windows box from Unix. I also learned what they were getting at when using certain words or topics, like if they mention differential backups the answer is not to worry about tape restore order even though you have two tapes and have to resture the full backup first and then the differential or else it's not going to work as expected. When they mention tape order they are thinking of incremental, even though tape order is a concern both ways, it's a matter of context I guess. Tape order is an incremental problem (from Server+'s view), and archive bits are a differential problem.

Anyway, I'm happy.

Now I have to pursue some vendor certifications to be more versatile for my current employer, and I'm interested in Network+ and MCDST because I think I can pass them with minimal review studying. After that I may pick from MCSA or MCSE tests and the MCDBA tests.